Sade adopts positions in
the extreme. He intends to shock, but there was a gentle and idealistic
side to him. You see where you stand when you read Sade. He puts the
bottom to literature, the worst that could be written, the worst that
could be imagined. It's good to know the enemy; knowing the bottom line
of human nature is a very good sign of health at the end of this
violent century.

About
the
Marquis
de
Sade,
everyone
knows
too
much,
and
too
little.
Even
during
his
own
time,
the
myth
of
Sade
was growing, taking on a shape of
its own, larger than his own life, so that he came to live not just
behind the stone walls of the Bastille, but behind the equally
impenetrable mask of false ideas other people put on him. In the end,
he became a being not entirely of himself, but rather a kind of
collaborative construction, a being of myth, a force in the
consciousness of humanity, known by only one name: "Sade."

The Book
Based on a decade of research, The Marquis de Sade: A Life
by Neil Schaeffer reveals the astonishingly non-sadistic Sade: his
capacity for deep romantic love, his inexhaustible charm, his
delusional paranoia. And through a dazzling reading of Sade's novels,
including the notorious masterpiece 120 Days of Sodom,
Schaeffer argues powerfully for Sade as one of the great literary
imaginations of the eighteenth century.

Even stripped of exaggerations, Sade's real life was as
dramatic and as tragic as a cautionary tale. Born to an ancient and
noble house, he was married (against his wishes) to a middle-class
heiress for money, caused scandals with prostitutes and with his
sister-in-law, thus enraging his mother-in-law, who had him imprisoned
under a lettre de cachet for 14 years until the Revolution
freed him. Amphibian, protean, charming, the ex-marquis became a
Revolutionary, miraculously escaping the guillotine during the Terror,
only to be arrested later for publishing his erotic novels. He spent
his final 12 years in the insane asylum at Charenton, where he caused
another scandal by directing plays using inmates and professional
actors. He died there in 1814, virtually in the arms of his teenage
mistress.

"Either killme or take me as
I
am, because I'll be damned
if I ever change..."

Sade,
from a letter to his wife, written in
prison, November 1783

Sade was incarcerated for 14 years
without trial before being freed by the French Revolution. In that time
he wrote hundreds of letters to his wife. In researching The
Marquis de Sade: A Life, Neil Schaeffer translated hundreds of
letters, many of which have never before appeared in English. Read them here, or receive a brand new
translation by email each week.

The Works
"He explored the bottom line of human nature, the worst imaginable; he
is modern because any writer who explores the depths of human nature is
modern. He has Norman Mailer's best attack style, so excessive and
extreme, and Mailer is the best satirist since Twain. Sade adopts
positions in the extreme. He intends to shock, but there was a gentle
and idealistic side to him. You see where you stand when you read Sade."